


Ships in the Night (That Send up Flares)

by Skull_Bearer



Series: Notes From The Morning After [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Cute, First Kiss, Hermann loves Pi, Kaiju, M/M, Newtn loves Hermann, Pi, sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 01:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skull_Bearer/pseuds/Skull_Bearer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because knowing what's inside makes it hard to stop wondering about what's outside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ships in the Night (That Send up Flares)

In the Drift, they had felt the outline, the details of each others’ minds. A flexible, shifting thing, stretching and changing before falling back into its old shape, never-quite-the-same. They had pressed against each other, left impressions, learnt themselves and each other and never quite returned to the shape they had before. 

They’d worn each other down, in the years they spent working together, filing down each other’s rough edges until they Drifted, and slotted together like jigsaw pieces, snap and lock. They knew every inch of each other, inside.

But not out. And Newt wondered how someone like Hermann; gorgeous blazes of light on a horizon of numbers and calculations, like a distant war in the land of arithmetic, could _fit_ in that lanky, confused body.

He found himself looking at him, just _looking_ , trying to trace out the outline of his body under his clothes, trying to see how he fit together without burning himself to ash through sheer intensity.

He doesn’t do it at night, although it’s tempting. But Newt isn’t going to start shaking up their comfy little arrangement of living, working, sleeping together in case Hermann decided this was getting _weird_ and go back to his room.

So  it’s pretty weird to wake up, still turned against the wall, feeling unusually cold, with Hermann tracing out the lines of the tattoos on his back.

“Uhm- wha-“ Newt mumbled intelligently, and gets a mouthful of duvet for his pains. The blankets drop on top of him and Hermann jerks away and pretends to be asleep, his back to Newt.

Newt can taste ice in the back of his mind, the feeling of Hermann trying to pull away. “Hey.” Newt sits up, reaches over. Hermann’s skin is smooth and warm under his hand. “You can look.”

Hermann doesn’t answer, tense under his hand. “It’s not like they’re any kinda secret. I mean, _look at them_.”

The muscles under his hand relax, just a little, and Hermann rolls over. His usually neat hair is a sleep-mussed mess, soft and feathered. Newt wonders what it would feel like, and, well, why not?

It is soft, dense; Hermann closes his eyes and sighs, looking tired. Newt wonders if he’s slept. “What time is it?”

“It does not matter, roll over and let me see.”

Newt kicks the blankets off, and turns to face the wall. The chill in the room thaws a little when Hermann comes closer, and touches the edge of Slattern, where the creature’s tails disappear into the waistband of his sleeping pants. The tattoo is still raw and even that touch makes Newt shiver.

His hands are very light, a barely-there breath of a touch, maybe a scratch of nail, running up the slight ridges of the ink, over the edge of Newt’s shoulderblade where he had Trespasser inked in thirteen years ago, hidden under his clothes so no one would know he was there. He stopped caring nine years ago, when he ran out of space on his back and the kaiju spilled down his upper arms like an invading force.

Hermann doesn’t ask him to turn over, but comes even closer, pressing together chest to back, and puts a hand on Newt’s chest to prop himself up to look at his chest, fingers curling over where Scissure’s stretched out along his ribs.

Newt leans, ostensibly to give him a better view but really because being this close just relaxes something he didn’t know was tensed up in his mind. The closest they’ve been since the Drift.

Hermann’s thumb rubs against Onibaba, just under his collarbone and the reason he hasn’t taken his shirt off in public since he got here. She’s one of the biggest, painted a darker grey to obscure the underlying image.

Hermann’s fingers find the old lines, half buried under the roaring Onibaba. “Godzilla?”

“Don’t laugh, I was fifteen, okay?”

“That would be the least problematic image here.” He taps one of Newt’s newest ornaments; Otachi in flight on his right flank. Newt winces. “Why her?”

“Keep her where I can see her.” Newt tries to smile it off. Hermann doesn’t smile, he’s been inside Newt’s head, he knows how scared he was.

Newt rolls over on his back, Hermann half on top of him. He’s _warm_ , all sharp edges and elbows. He smells of sleep and it feels so normal to be like this that neither of them pull away. It feels right.

Hermann doesn’t move. Hermann doesn’t even shut up. He props himself up on one elbow, apparently not even noticing he’s got his bad leg thrown across both of Newts’. “You cannot convince me this is just groupie rubbish, not after the Drift. Not after it tried to eat you.” His finger press; light but still _ouch_ , on Otashi’s left wing.

“It’s just-“ Newt’s never really tries to explain it before. No one’s ever asked. They usually just looked sick and ignored him pointedly. “- It’s part of me, you know? Something that awesome, and it’s part of me. Seriously, who wouldn’t want that?”

“You have yet to convince me.”

Newt grins, a challenge. “Yeah, I bet I could convince you. Like- your favourite maths equation, or some of the code you wrote for the Jaegers, or- I got it. Pi, we could get you like as many digits of Pi as you want and ink that in. You choose where. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

And Hermann seriously looks as if he’s considering it, which is the best victory ever. Then he tries to get the scornful look back. “Are you suggesting _kaiju_ are somehow comparable to the majesty of Pi?”

“Hey, Kaiju are awesome, seriously, you Drifted with them.”

“And they were blunt force instruments used by a genocidal species, how admirable.”

“Hey, you see one of the masters here?” Newt spreads his arms out, to give Hermann a better view. Hermann catches his arm and examines the detail there. Yamarashi, Taurax one long Spinejackal running along the inside of his arm in what was probably the most painful tattoo Newt’s ever had. “Fuck those assholes.”

Hermann’s shoulders shake with silent laughter, and he shifts until he’s off Newt. Newt’s skin prickles in the unwelcome cold. But now, there’s enough space for Newt to finally _see_ Hermann. He’s a bit self-conscious, but her, quid pro quo and whatever.

Hermann doesn’t notice, examining the slightly crushed Hound he managed to get on his wrist before deciding to move on to his other arm.

He’s better built than Newt, which is a bit of a shock to find, and yeah, Newt is a bit jealous. His shoulders are well muscled from the use of a cane, tendons and muscles neatly defined in his right arm more than his left. His body is all neat lines, only a little flab around the middle and yeah, Newt is definitely jealous-

Hermann looks up and catches his eye, and flushes a rather striking red. He tries to pull the blankets back over him. Newt tugs them off again.

“Hey, hey, not fair. Why do you get to look and I don’t?”

“I doubt you will find any kaiju on me.” Hermann tries to should cutting, but doesn’t meet Newt’s eyes, and it falls flat.

“You’re pretty cool too.” The muscles on Hermann’s back are taut and neat as the rest of him, every inch in place and perfect. And maybe it would be a shame to marr that with tattoos. Newt didn’t have much to lose, but his body had never been much to write home about.

“I doubt you would add me to your collection.”

Huh, not as such, but Newt wouldn’t mind adding something that represented Hermann, maybe _he_ could get a few digits of Pi, just as, you know, a reminder, something to reflect the presence burned into his mind.

Hermann goes even redder, which could not be more cute. He jerks his head away and stares at the ceiling for a second, before pulling up the right leg of his pants, the bad leg.

After all the neat lines of his body, Newt was expecting – without really knowing he was expecting it – for that scar, if there was a scar at all, but be neat as well. A straight little white line, a round hollow, something that _fitted_.

It’s a mess.

His knee’s a mangled knot of flesh and scar tissue; that would be painful to even look at if Newt didn’t intimately know that the nerve damage had left no pain at all. But it doesn’t bear his weight, and the skin is healed up so tight it doesn’t bend properly.

Hermann is look everywhere that isn’t Newt, which is just painful because this fits too. Newts’s been inside his head, he know what it’s like in there; brilliant and dazzling and never quite predictable.

“Hey.” Newt catches his chin, tips his face up so their eyes meet. “Hey. It’s cool.”

Something flickers in Hermann’s eyes, just a moment’s notice before he closes the gap and his mouth meets Newt’s.

And fireworks go off behind Newt’s eyes, everything’s bright and brilliant and dazzling. His finger curl at the nape of Newt’s neck and yeah, that’s the place.

He’s going to have those digits of Pi _just there_.


End file.
